Mass Effect
 

Got Mass Effect installed - Virgin key as i did with Bioshock. I refuse to allow these idiots copy protections to rule my life. My BioShock key has never been registered as now is Mass Effect. When will they get a clue?

-S

Dont know, but may I just say that ME was a pleasent surprise. Nice to see a good game once in a while. ;) Tho, it was a bit short (IIRC, the final time was ~16hrs). :-?

I was also positively surprised and very much looking forward to the next installment- this is supposed to be a trilogy if I've understood it correctly. It's not a perfect game but still definitely a winner. A few things to complain do exist, however:
The hacking minigame grew old really fast. On lockers and such it's allright but on corpses, mineral deposits etc. it's simply stupid.
Too much Mako. Nuff said.
Interface sucked. They made it unnecessarily complicated when they could've done it with the good ole double-click system. I kept assigning 'wrong' skills to people before I got the hang of it.
My game is very dark, could be the monitor though, too. Had to crank gamma all the way up. No biggie.
Got a couple of lock-ups during dialog parts with certain people. To be fixed in patch, I suppose.
Besides these I was actually hooked on it, the whole 'Can't put this down/What happens next?´ thingy. Lotsa thought and effort has been clearly been put into ME with success in the end. The dialogue and voice-acting effectively raised the bar for other games to surpass- Jennifer Hale and Lance Henriksen most notably were really swinging it.
16 hrs to finish? You must've missed half the stuff, mine was at least double to that.

I look forward to actually starting a game, now that I seem to have solved my freezes and lockups, which were the worst I've ever had in 10 years of gaming. I literally could not get off the Normady for the first mission before the thing would freeze up.

Basically I updated my 8800 drivers to 177.26 (leaked) and commented out a couple of lines in the BIOEngine.ini file related to the sound engine. I can't recall exactly what they were (something to do with 'NoHAL') but anyone here is experiencing similar issues I'll post the fix when I get home.

Mass Effect is definitely dumbed down for consoles graphics wise. This is no Crysis, that is for sure. Notice the lights in the distance. Talk about lowering detail to make sure frame rate stays high. Not clear and crisp. This is on the max settings with all options running.

-S

http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/8...seffectsf5.jpg

Hmm... that's odd, my graphics are crispy apart that noise filter there is constantly. Where you took that shot? I wanna check it out. :hmm:

That pixelation is a known bug that's supposed to be fixed with new drivers coming out, or so I heard (ATI, atleast)

I was gonna say, that looks like something from the 1990s...Doom anyone?

I think you're right. That's a blur filter messing up.

-S

Personaly i turned the film effect and motion blur off (who the heck gets motion blur when turning their head?)

That shot is the first mission at the dig site where the beacon was suppost to be (it got moved) looking at the ramp going up.

Don't say i never gave you guys anything:

http://www.badongo.com/file/9955296

That was a pain in the butt to extract. Ended up needing a hex editor to make it work.

-S

The intro music and scene are among the best I've seen, no doubt. Sometimes I prolonged loading just to listen a little further. Also, after the last scene, listen to the music while the credits roll in. Sweet.

I'll have a listen and if good, I extract that too.

-S

This was an even BIGGER pain than the intro! Have at it.

I notice that the Intro is at 48 khz, but the credits is at 44.1? Not much for consistancy for them.

http://www.badongo.com/file/9969453

Anyway, this was buried in a 150 MB file, so i had to again use a hex editor. Some files in it have incomaptible streams too.

-S

PS. In case anyone cares, I hear the audio guys for Mass Effect are going to release a whole CD. I will probably pick that up if its this good. I'd like higher quality samples.

All right, thanks mate! Good stuff indeed. I'm also gonna pick up that CD if/when it comes out Definitely sort of Vangelis' Blade Runner thing going on there.